We are deep underground being led towards a drow city in almost complete darkness, minimal light sources allowed lest we attract attention from whatever lurks in the caverns and corridors, our hired guide using his experience and heightened senses to keep us on track. But he can be quite a capricious fellow. One minute the guide is telling us to row across an underground lake quickly and quietly, the next he wants us to push away from the far shore and float gently out to the middle of the lake. And then throw our oars overboard.

I've heard about brain slugs, so before we get too far away from shore I perform some quick phrenology and find tentacles thrust in to the guide's head. I raise the alert and Gruknal starts pushing back towards shore, Grimstorm grabs a small light source, and Adran swings his ceremonial swords around. Adran's actions are less an uncharacteristic display of heroism and more a satisfying show of self-preservation, as he bought some ointment from the guide that, when smeared on the eyes, gains a person darkvision for a short period.

At the first sign of trouble Adran wants to escape and smears the paste on his eyes, which brings in to view a Slime Mage Aboleth, a creature so specialised that the GM doesn't mind showing us its name. Unfortunately for Adran, the slime mage throws slime everywhere, immobilising half the party, and he has the task of holding the aboleth at bay until we all recover and can flee to a tunnel.

Although Adran can see quite clearly, the rest of us are in a spot of bother. We have some dim light that Grimstorm is providing but it doesn't project quite far enough to light up the monster, and we don't want to attract any more attention by dropping a sunrod. Gruknal frees himself from the slime and moves to defend the rest of us, relying on Adran to be told where to stand and attack.

It's not long before the slime dissipates enough for all of us to either move freely or get dragged along by someone who can, and we head towards a tunnel entrance, one narrow enough that the aboleth won't be able to follow us through. Myself, Grimstorm and the guide get there first, Krafft following passively behind, before Gruknal catches us up. Then we hear a sickening gurgle just before Adran rejoins us, somewhat elated.

'I did it! In one amazing blow, using up a couple of daily powers and my best abilities, I cut the aboleth in twain. I did well over 80 damage in a single hit!'

'That's quite impressive, but it's a little peculiar how you are always most effective when no one else can see you.'

'But I did! The beast is dead!'

'Very good. But let us move swiftly down this passage before it catches up with us.' Sadly, it looks like no bards will be singing of Adrans heroics yet again.

This entry was posted
on 20th August 2009 at 9.28 pm and is filed under Dungeons & Dragons.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
Both comments and pings are currently closed.